1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a messaging system, and more particularly to a posthumous messaging system.
2. Related Art
Often a person facing death and/or preparing for their death wishes to leave messages for those who survive them. This is commonly done through video messages that may be viewed during a funeral service and/or at the reading of the individual's last will and testament. Currently, there are some websites that provide services for leaving messages to a deceased's survivors. Some of these websites are utilized to merely leave photos and videos that may be uploaded to the site. Other sites provide an opportunity for the user to share stories regarding their lives. At least one website provides a forum for victims of cancer to share their stories regarding their disease. After death, these stories remain on the website for others to read. Some websites provide a means to leave personal messages to specific individuals. Such websites may also be used to supplement a last will and testament and/or to organize a person's final affairs.
Unfortunately, many of these websites do not allow the user to appoint a trustee who is responsible for the release of messages and information on the site after the person's death. Rather, these websites are reliant on any particular survivor for providing notice of the user's death. As a result, the notice may not be provided and the messages are never sent. Additionally, the notice may be inadvertently provided, thereby authorizing the release of information and messages before the user's death. Some websites do not require any notice of the user's death, but rather, send emails during the user's life indicating to other's that a message will be available upon the user's death. Accordingly, these emails may be ignored and/or forgotten by the time of the user's death. As a result, the messages may never be received. At least one website operates using a set time period for release of the messages. If the user does not log in to the website within the set time period, the user is assumed dead and the messages are automatically generated. As such, inadvertent death messages may be sent during the user's life. A need remains for a posthumous or other time capsule messaging system that requires the authorization of a trustee to release messages, information, and/or documents.
Another downfall to existing messaging systems is that they do not provide catalysts for inspiration of the messages. Often, when an individual is sick and nearing death, they may not recall much of their lives and, therefore, have difficulty preparing messages to leave at the time of their death. As a result, the individual may not properly express their feelings, resulting in dissatisfaction with their messages. Another need remains for a messaging system that provides inspiration so that the user is capable of fully expressing their feelings shortly before their death.
Moreover, existing messaging services merely send messages at the time of the individual's death. However, some people may wish to leave messages that are delivered at particular milestones. For example, a grandparent may wish to leave messages for their grandchildren on the grandchild's birthday or a user may wish to offer congratulations to a family member on an upcoming graduation day. As another example, a spouse may desire for their husband or wife to receive a message each year on their wedding anniversary. Current messaging systems are not capable of sending milestones messages well into the future.
Additionally, current messaging systems are only offered to individuals. Accordingly, the messages must be recorded and uploaded to the website at a time when an individual is relatively healthy and has access to a computer. Existing systems do not allow corporate accounts, for example, hospital accounts. At the present time, individuals who have become bed-ridden within a hospital or healthcare setting do not have access to a computer to record their final statements to loved ones.
Prior art systems include the use of a webpage to collect the memories related to a deceased person, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,947,921, a posthumous communication system as described in US Pat. Pub. No. 2002/0072925 and a posthumous communication system and gifting system as described in US Pat. Pub. No. 2009/0265382. There are also systems that describe the delivery of greeting cards at some future known date, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,983,200, and that describe the posthumous delivery of greeting cards, such as described in US Pat. Pub. No. 2011/0082817. However, none of these references teaches or suggests a delayed messaging system, posthumous or otherwise, which allows a user to select a message from predefined listing of message options to create a message within the delayed messaging system while also giving users the option of automatically connecting to their e-mail programs or connecting with their social media pages to post their messages or linking to particular messages and items available by electronic greeting cards or e-commerce sites which are related to the message topics that are of most interest to the user. Each one of these references are incorporated by reference.